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Amy Crump steps down as Homewood library director

Amy Crump, director of the Homewood Public Library, submitted her resignation to the board. Her last day will be Dec. 7.

Crump has accepted a new position as director of the Bellwood Library.

Amy Crump has resigned her position as executive director at Homewood Public Library to lead Bellwood Library. (Provided photo)

“I will have been here five years and 11 months. It went by in a blink,” she said.

She is most proud of the 2015 development of the second floor mezzanine open space for the FORT (Friends of Remarkable Teens) underwritten with a $52,000 gifts from the Friends of the Homewood Library.

“The FORT has helped build a relationship with local teens that perhaps wasn’t present before,” she said, by giving teens their own space for books geared toward them, as well as an area with computers and iPads, games and a music listening station.

During her time at the Homewood library, Crump has worked to extend the library’s outreach into the community through direct representation in parades and at the village’s farmers market, as well as developing one-to-one relationships with businesses.

“I’m also very pleased with the amount of school collaboration” that includes interactions not just at the elementary level, but also at James Hart School and a new internship that is being developed for two students at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Crump said.

She is excited that two staff members – Darnetta Bolton and Kelly Campos – are Spectrum Scholarship recipients for 2017-18. Homewood has two of the nine Illinois recipients. The scholarships, offered by the American Library Association, help underwrite the cost of earning a library science degree for diverse students interested in a library career and who show leadership potential.

Building maintenance, while not something patrons notice, is essential. Over the past five years, the library board approved a change in the building’s lighting converting for energy efficiency bulbs and replaced the boiler on the nearly 30 year-old building.

Crump earned a master of library science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her first job was at a small library in Marshall, Missouri, where she worked for eight years with a staff of 15 people.

When she followed that with the Homewood position, she jumped to a library with a staff of 50 employees and a $2.42 million budget. She is grateful for the opportunities Homewood opened to her as an administrator.

With the Bellwood job, Crump will work with a staff of 20, and be both a director and spend time as a librarian interacting directly with patrons.

Crump is married to Eric Crump, founder of the Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle.

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